Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Emmett, were you not listening last night when I was drunkenly ranting about men who keep pushing me to do what they want?”

“Yes, but I don’t count, I’m family,” he said, frowning.

“Bullshit!” I exclaimed. “Being family means you count twice. I don’t want a makeover. I don’t want you laying out outfits for me like I’m six years old. I’m perfectly comfortable in what I have on, thank you, and old enough to pick out my own damn clothes.”

“Fine,” he said icily, dropping the sweater on the bed. “You have ten minutes to do something with your face and get your poly-blend-covered ass in the car, woman, or I’m calling Mama and telling her you chose to stay here instead of with her.”

I gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” he said, before sweeping out of the room. “No. No dramatic exits this time. I have something to say to you. So your life didn’t turn out exactly as you expected? Well, boo fucking hoo, sweetie. You think this is how I saw my life turning out? Despite dating every eligible man between here and New Orleans, I don’t know if I’m ever going to have someone to share my life with. Dad doesn’t have anything to do with me. Even though I have plenty of acquaintances, including that coven you met the other night, my baby sister is my closest friend, which is just fucking sad. The only thing I have going for me is my keen eye for breakables made fifty years ago and the fact that you occasionally let me boss you around, even if it’s just about your hair. But that’s my life. It’s what I make of it.”

“I’m your closest friend?” I asked. “That is flicking sad.”

He ignored me. “But you want to know what pisses me off more than anything? That in the end, Mike gave you something most of us would kill for.”

“A vulnerability to STDs?”

I made an “uhhf” sound when he threw a pillow at me. “A second chance! Thanks to his boffing the secretary, you found a man who loves you and is just waiting for you to stop being a moron so you can make a life together.”

“No, I have a man who thinks I’d be great if I just tweaked my personality a bit here and there to suit his needs,” I countered. “Look, I opened myself up to someone completely. And I got burned for it. I’m afraid now that I won’t be able to love anybody else. And part of me thinks that’s okay, that maybe it’s worth it if I don’t have to hurt like this anymore.”

Emmett sighed. “Lace, let’s not romanticize your time with Mike. We both know -”

“I’m not talking about Mike; I’m talking about Monroe.”

“Oh.” Emmett chewed his lip for a moment. “Well, then, that was a valid and well-constructed argument.”

“I’m sorry, Em. I do appreciate what you do for me. Maybe I just need a little less of it. I’ll be in the car in five minutes,” I said, squeezing his hand.

“Take seven,” he said, patting my leg as he pushed up from the bed.

“I’m wearing the sweats!” I called, flopping back on the bed. “I do not know who won that argument.”

A cold strawberry Pop-Tart and a colder Coke later, I was sitting at the computer at Emmett’s desk, cataloging a set of milk glass pitchers.

“I do not know how you drink that stuff so early.” Emmett shuddered as I took a long pull from the frosty red can. “It can’t be good for you.”

“Says the man drinking three hits of espresso mixed with overheated milk and four sugars,” I said, searching through the tangle of spreadsheets on his hard drive for the appropriate tracking number.

“It’s low-fat milk,” he said.

I shook my head and ignored him. Emmett’s office! storeroom was a sort of cross between Au Baba’s cave and Grandma’s creepy attic, filled with old bicycles, old framed movie posters, kitschy cookie jars, and the odd antique wooden dressmaker’s form. Emmett had a special case to protect the books, magazines, and comic books from humidity and dust. There were dozens of china dolls lined up on Lucite cases on the shelves, like an imprisoned evil doll army. I had a hard time turning my back on them.

Emmett had remodeled the former Faber’s Hardware Store so that the storeroom took up the majority of the real estate. He’d walled off the reception area to create a cozy space where he could greet clients at a refurbished Queen Anne table, appraise their valuables for a reserve bid, determine a commission, and sign their paperwork.

While Emmett was willing to sell online for anyone, there was also a small showroom for the items Emmett had gleaned from estate sales and auctions. Emmett sold direct to select, discerning clients who drove hundreds of miles for the privilege of picking through his private collection of antique glass and furniture.

It was that special collection that was giving me fits at the moment. My brother might have been obsessively protective of the condition of the items entrusted to his care, but he sucked at tracking where they ended up. It was some sort of miracle that he managed to ship the items to the buyers. I guessed the “in the now” quality of eBay sales helped him stay on top of those items, but anything that stayed in the store long-term was in danger of being lost in the shuffle. There were half-finished address spreadsheets, spreadsheets that used abbreviations that might have been Sanskrit, and a list of names Emmett had just titled “Nuh-uh.”

“Hey, Em, what does ‘dep. R. dais. 4-set,’ mean?” I asked, thumbing the so-called inventory book while I walked into the reception area. Tansy Moffitt, our pastor’s first cousin, was sitting at Emmett’s desk while he looked over a collection of old National Geographic magazines.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you had a customer,” I said, backing away.

Suddenly I wished that I’d shut the hell up and put on Emmett’s stylish sweater and jeans ensemble.

“We’re just finished,” Emmett said, smirking. Tansy Moffitt had the biggest mouth in four counties. The minute she left the store, she would activate a phone tree that would bring every busybody reachable by Ma Bell to Emmett’s door.

“Lacey!” Tansy cried, springing up from the chair. “I didn’t realize you were here! How have you been? We haven’t seen you in such a long time. Let me get a look at you. Oh, I just love that new haircut. It’s so … interesting! Now, I know that things are hard for you right now, but I’d really like to see you in church this Sunday. Your church family misses you, shug!”

“I think that would be sort of awkward, with Mike’s whole family being there,” I told her. “But thank you.”

“Oh, honey, I think you all just need to put this whole thing behind you. You know, the reverend is preaching a whole series on forgiveness this month and I couldn’t help but think last Sunday how much it would help you and Mike to just let the past be the past. You just set it before the Lord and forget it.”

“You set it, and forget it,” Emmett said, grinning at me, daring me to laugh at his inappropriately Jesus-based Ron Popeil-Rotisserie joke.

“I appreciate the thought, Tansy,” I told her, trying to tug my hand out of hers, but she just wouldn’t let go. The woman had a grip like a teamster. “I just need some time.”

“Oh, sure, shug,” she said. “You give me a call if you need anything at all. And I’ll see you this Sunday, right?”

“Still too soon, Tansy.”

“Well, I’m not going to give up, I’ll be stopping by every week until we see you there,” she said cheerfully, waving to Emmett as she walked out the door.

Through tight, smiling lips, I said, “I believe you.”

“I think I know someone who’s going home at lunch to ch-a-ange,” Emmett sang.

“Yes, okay?” I cried, burying my face in my hands. “I will submit to your Machiavellian fashion machinations. Clearly, I was wrong to choose this particular area to make my stand.”